A Short Note On The Pro Democracy Movement

On April 27, 1989, hundreds of Chinese protestors took a stand against the oppressive and corrupt government to fight for reform and democracy by occupying Tiananmen Square in Beijing, China. The protests were preceded by a memorial for Hu Yaobang, a Communist leader unpopular amongst Party members for his liberal ideas and lack of enthusiasm for Marxism and Maoism. Marxism is the political theories of Karl Marx which became the basis of Communism and the inspiration for Mao Zedong to create Maoism. Approximately 100,000 students had traveled to Tiananmen Square for Hu Yaobang’s memorial. Following the memorial, students presented a petition to meet with Premier Li Peng which the government refused. This led to a boycott of universities but also led to more demand for democracy. Catalyzing the protests was the unfair treatment of the Chinese people at the hands of the Chinese Communist Party. Along with students, civil servants, scholars and laborers joined the protests, risking their lives, jobs and reputations. By June of 1989, negotiations were in place to end the protests, now amounting to over a million people and for democratic reform. Mao Zedong had ordered troops

The Tiananmen Square massacre happened on June 4, 1989. Chinese troops arrested and killed many pro-democratic protesters at the Tiananmen Square in Beijing. Young students were the majority of the protesters and they wanted the Chinese Communist Party to stop corruption. The protests started in May and continued into June, where they became more violent. When the troops opened fire on the protesters, some fought back. Grace’s description of the massacre was very accurate. She described it as very violent and the troops ran over protesters with tanks. Grace and her Mom went to the

Though termed the Tiananmen Square Massacre, this incident actually took place throughout China. What started out as a peaceful protest calling for political and economic reforms, soon turned to bloodshed. (Hu 2015)This greatly impacted China's international relationships. Contact between China and Western nations declined, official visits were suspended. Western powers imposed arms embargoes and economic sanctions, preventing the sale of military equipment, and approval of loans. (The National Bureau of Asian Research) Understanding the causes of the Tiananmen Square Massacre, and its effects on China’s international relationships, aids in better understanding the nuances of this infamous incident.

On June 5, 1989, soldiers and tanks from China's People’s Liberation Army physically oppressed the student led protesters. The events surrounding this day are referred to as the Tiananmen Square Protest of 1989, a democracy movement calling for political and social reforms in the Republic of China. The deaths that occurred as a consequence of the Tiananmen Square Protest was not the fault of the students, but rather, the disastrous situation of China beforehand, the common belief that demonstrations would succeed, and the government’s obstinate decisions.

Humiliating and pushing the Chinese to the bottom of the social class, leads to a community where everyone wants to belittle the minority. People start to focus more about making their lives suffer than worry about trying to change the country for the better. When people went against the country’s own values and became immoral, it showed other countries that America could not be trusted and they are not stable. The government leaders turned their backs on the two documents that hold the country together and this act of betrayal was something that can become unforgivable. Finally, injustice and the unfair treating of humans prevented the country from reaching its goals.

As in all revolutionary movements, there are many accelerators that work to transform the countries they involve. Correspondingly, there were many causes that started both the American and Chinese Communist revolutions, some being similar and some being different. One of the main causes of the revolutions was that they both were inspired by the Enlightenment. This factor made both wars and their outcomes more intellectually based rather than physically. Another main accelerator that forced the people to fight for a change in their government was due to an unpopular method of rule. In both China and America, the forms of government previous to their revolutions and extreme political changes were despised among a majority of the commonplace

China has always been renowned for being successful in the domains of science and arts, however in previous decades, China has been ravaged by famines, civil discomfort and foreign outsourcing. China was consumed by this injustice until well after the Second World War when Mao Zedong introduced Communism adapted from the U.S.S.R, and created an autocratic socialist system which imposes firm constraints upon the Chinese social, political and economic system. It wasn't until the 1980's China's following leader Deng Xiaoping who focused focused on developing China into a

Because a revolution is the last thing I want to see that happens in my country and I never feel things are that bad in China. That moment remind me how different Chinese and American think. I took a Chinese history class in the fall semester of 2014, and in that class, one of the things I learnt from those more than 200 pages books is that unlike American people, Chinese people never put individual at the first place. There are lots of things we put before ourselves, such as family and country. The word “country” in Chinese is “国家”, which is combined by two words “国” (nation) and “家” (family). We think our country as a huge family and we value the peace in this family more than anything. That’s why there were only a few revolutions in the 5-thousand-year history of

The Prodemocracy Movement, the Bloody Massacre in Tiananmen Square, and the Tiananmen Square Incident or Massacre are just a few of the names of the protests that went wrong that began in April 1989 and came to an upsetting end in June 1989. The citizens of China had wanted a political form for a long time, but did not know how and when to start. The protests started when a favored government official died. Shortly after, Mikhail Gorbachev visited Communist China, and everyone was jealous of the relationship he had with his people. The protesters went on a hunger strike because they wished they had leaders like Gorbachev. This gained the support of many people, and eventually there were over one million people camped out in Tiananmen Square asking for a change in their corrupt government. The government officials got very angry and send out an army to use against their own people. A great deal of people died and a ton were injured. Because the media was able to cover a majority of everything that happened, everyone around the world saw it, and it changed their thoughts of the Chinese government. The Tiananmen Square Massacre ruined China 's international image throughout the world.

At first these plans along with an extremely ingenious propaganda campaign stirred great optimism and productivity within the Chinese people, but as years went by the initial flare and excitement went out and few of these promises, reforms and goals had been reached. In some cases the promises were lies. The real actions of the Communist party showed quite a different picture than the lie of democracy that it was feeding the people. The new government never was a democratic one. As a matter of fact it was a dictatorship controlled by the China’s Communist Party (CCP). Throughout the years the communist government consistently and cruelly suppressed any attempts for the country’s democratization.

China has been a communist country since the communist revolution took place in 1949, since then China has been ruled by the dictator Mao Tse-Tung. However the Chinese dictator died in September 1976, he was hailed abroad as one of the worlds’ great leaders. Certainly one of the more impressive aspects of the Chinese communist government, has been the willingness of the people to protest against it (3, pg. 4).

In Mao's era, there was also little room for free speech due to the immense censorship that pervaded the period. Individual thinking and Confucian philosophy were renounced with a youth movement, The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, to criticize everything and to revive the spirit of the revolution. Until his death in 1976, when Deng Xiao Ping took control of the Communist Party, Mao accentuated maintaining the revolutionary ideals of communal 'freedom' and the ultimate sacrifice of the individual for the enhancement of China.

Deng Xiaoping has been the individual with the most impact on China since the 1970’s. Along with Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai, he is looked at as one of the key figures in evolution of communism in China . Deng Xiaoping will be remembered as a national hero, but this was not always the case. The real story of Deng includes the fact that, on more than one occasion, his peers ostracized him. During his lifetime he has been a part of the many changes in China throughout the twentieth century. He was by Mao Zedong’s side through all of the struggles of the Chinese Communist Party; battling with Chiang Kai-shek and the Guomindang over

Deng Xiaoping, Chinese communist leader, who considered as one of the most significant and influential leaders in Chinese history during 20 century. He joined Chinese Communist Party in the early age and served as a political officer in the party. However, he was purged from the communist party during the Cultural Revolution, which because his ideology was not praised by Mao Zedong. By 1977, he returned to the party and became the most powerful leader in People Republic of China from 1970s until his death in 1997.

From post-1976 onwards, Deng Xiaoping and his conservative pragmatist government would bring great reform to China, which would allow her to tide over the troubles caused by the crisis in communism. Indeed, it would seem that his economic reforms were the main reason for China's survival, as opposed to political reform. Under Deng Xiaoping, action was taken to move China from a Soviet-style command economy to a more capitalist market economy. On the other hand, political reform was not as pronounced as Deng wished to retain the traditional communist style of party dictatorship.